Yelp narrows sales team focus for online deals

Online reviews site Yelp is making a change to the way it allocates its sales force to the online deal service it launched last year. The move comes less than a week after Facebook shuttered a similar program that failed to gain traction in a market dominated by Groupon.

In a post Tuesday on the Yelp blog, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said Yelp Deals isn't closing, but that it shrank from a team of 30 focused on selling deals and local ads to 15 people that will only work on deals.

He wrote, "We'll continue to email out any amazing Deals we find; rest assured when it comes to quality vs quantity, we'll choose quality every time."

Yelp Deals offers occasional deals in 20 markets, including San Francisco and New York.